Chris Powell Can't Pin Newspaper Woes On Welfare Moms

EditorialThe Hartford Courant

It is no secret that print journalism faces enormous challenges today, but we don't think these challenges were brought about by welfare moms. That puts us at odds with the Manchester Journal Inquirer's managing editor, Chris Powell.

Many students of the industry ascribe the decline in print journalism to the rise of the Internet and the migration of classified advertising to sites like Craigslist. In a column that's getting a lot of attention online, Mr. Powell instead proposes that the real villain is a breakdown of the social fabric, epitomized by rent-cheating, barely literate welfare mothers.

Mr. Powell says, and here we agree, that newspapers are still indispensable for conveying local and state news and providing understanding of public policy. But he seems to think many people cannot comprehend this information "now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps." He's wrong: Nearly 70 percent of Connecticut children live with two married parents and have since 2008, according to the Census Bureau. We couldn't substantiate his claim about developmental handicaps.

He says newspapers can still market themselves to "traditional households — two-parent families involved with their children." But newspapers "cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read."

Aside from his stereotyping, and general nastiness, newspapers never relied on people who couldn't afford to buy the paper, and fortunately there aren't many such people. Mr. Powell says such families are increasing, but the numbers say otherwise. There are 28 percent fewer households getting welfare today than a decade ago. Many of them are headed by grandparents, not single women, and many recipients are working, according to the state Department of Social Services.

And journalism readership is greater than ever. More readers saw Mr. Powell's column online than in print, and that includes caring single moms.

The challenge for the industry is to create a business model that supports quality journalism, however delivered. We're working on it.

The challenge is also to chronicle and change with the times, not hearken back to supposed good old days. Journalism needs to evolve, be dynamic, embrace the future, not run to a mythic past, while insulting people and getting facts wrong to boot.

The media's job is to portray the world as it is, not as Ronald Reagan might have seen it. Mr. Powell often is an effective provocateur and commentator, but this rant is unworthy of responsible journalism.